The Strain

by Guillermo Del Toro; Chuck Hogan

  The head remained speared to the wall, white blood spilling from its severed neck, the vampire’s black eyes flaring wide at both men…then rolling upward and relaxing, holding still. Eph grasped the handle of his sword and plucked it from the wall behind her mouth, and her head dropped on top of her body.

  There was no time to irradiate the white blood. “Up, up!” said Setrakian, walking along the wall to a different set of stairs, these circular with an ornate iron railing. The old man’s spirit was strong, but his strength was flagging. Eph passed him at the top. He looked right and left. In the dim light, he saw finished hardwood floors and unfinished walls. But no vampires.

  “We split up,” said the old man.

  “Are you kidding?” said Fet, grabbing hold of him and helping him to the top. “Never split up. That’s the first rule.”

  One of his lamps fizzled. The bulb popped as the unit overheated, and suddenly burst into flames. Fet dropped it, crushing the flames underneath his boot. Now he was down to one lamp.

  “How much more battery time?” Eph asked.

  “Not enough,” said the old man. “He will wear us down like this, having us chase him until nightfall.”

  “Gotta trap him,” said Fet. “Like a rat in a bathroom.”

  The old man stopped then, turning his head to a sound.

  Your heart is weak, you old wretch. I can hear it.

  Setrakian stood still, his sword at the ready. He looked all around, but there was no sign of the Dark One.

  He tapped the point of his sword on the floor. Pick-pick-pick. “Show yourself.”

  You have fashioned a handy tool.

  “You don’t recognize it?” said Setrakian aloud, with heavy breaths. “It was Sardu’s. The boy whose form you took.”

  Eph pulled closer to the old man, realizing that he was in a conversation with the Master. “Where is she?” he yelled. “Where is my wife?”

  The Master ignored Eph.

  Your whole life has led to this point. You will fail a second time.

  Setrakian said, “You will taste my silver, strigoi.”

  I will taste you, old man. And your clumsy apostles—

  The Master attacked from behind, throwing Setrakian to the floor again. Eph reacted, swiping his sword at the breeze he felt, a couple of guessing swishes. When he pulled back the blade, he found the tip sticky with white.

  He had hurt the Master. He had cut him.

  But in the moment it took to process this fact, the Master returned and swatted Eph in the chest with his taloned hand. Eph felt his feet leave the floor, his back and shoulders ramming into the wall, his muscles exploding with pain as his body fell to the side.

  Fet swept forward with his lamp, and Setrakian swung silver from one knee, pushing back the beast. Eph rolled over as fast as he could, bracing for more blows…but none came.

  They were all alone again. They could feel it. No sound except the tinkling of construction lights strung along the ceiling, swaying near the foot of the stairs.

  Eph said, “I cut him.”

  Setrakian used his sword to get to his feet, as one arm was hurt and hanging limp. He moved to the next flight of stairs going up.

  There was white vampire blood on the unfinished planking of the stairs.

  Sore but determined, they climbed the steps to the top. This was Bolivar’s penthouse, the top floor of the taller of the two conjoined town houses. They entered the bedroom half, looking for vampire blood on the floor. Seeing none, Fet went around the unmade bed to the far windows, tearing down the room-darkening curtains, letting in light but no direct sun. Eph checked the bathroom and found it even larger than he had expected, with facing, gold-framed mirrors reflecting him into infinity. An army of Ephraim Goodweathers with swords in their hands.

  “This way,” gasped Setrakian.

  Fresh streaks of white stood out against a black leather chair in the broader media room. Two arched and heavily draped doorways along the eastern wall showed soft light edging beneath the hem of the long curtains. The roof of the adjoining town house lay beyond.

  There they found the Master standing in the center of the room, his worm-infested face angled down toward them, onyx eyes staring, the dangerous daylight behind him. Iridescent white blood dripped, slow and irregular, down his arm and off his elongated hand, falling from the tip of his unearthly talon to the floor.

  Setrakian limped forward, his sword dragging behind him, scoring the wood floor. He stopped and raised the silver blade with his one good arm, facing the Master—his heart racing at too many beats per minute.

  “Strigoi,” he said.

  The Master stared, impassive for the moment, demoniacally regal, his eyes two dead moons in clouds of blood. The sole indicator of his predicament was the excited wriggling of the blood parasites beneath his inhuman face.

  For Setrakian, the moment was nearly at hand…and yet his heart was locking up, shutting him down.

  Eph and Fet converged behind him, and the Master had no alternative but to fight his way out of this room. His face spread into a savage sneer. He kicked up a long, low table at Eph, which battered him backward, and with his good arm sent a club chair sliding at Setrakian. These moves had the effect of splitting them, the Master blazing through the middle, going straight at Fet.

  Fet raised his lamp, but the Master dodged and came clawing at him from the side. Fet went down, falling, dazed, near the top of the stairs. The Master lunged past him, but Fet was fast, swinging the lamp on him—right into the Dark One’s snarling face. The UVC rays staggered him, driving him back against the wall, the plaster cracking against his great weight. When the Master’s claws came down from his face, his eyes were wider than before, and seemingly lost.

  The Master was blinded, but only temporarily. They all sensed their advantage here, and Fet went right at him with the lamp. The Master flailed back wildly. Fet drove the towering beast back across the room toward the curtained doors, and Eph rushed after him, slashing at the Dark One’s cloak, catching a bit of flesh. The Master’s talon swung but struck no one.

  Setrakian gripped the chair that had been slid at him, his sword clattering to the floor.

  Eph cut down the heavy drapes over one of the arches, revealing bright sunlight. Decorative iron grating barred the glass doors, but with one chop of his blade, the latch cracked free in a spray of sparks.

  Fet kept driving the Master backward. Then Eph spun around, looking to Setrakian to administer the finishing blow. That was when he saw the old professor laid out on the floor next to his sword, gripping his chest.

  Eph froze, looking at the vulnerable Master, then at Setrakian, dying on the floor.

  Fet, holding his lamp on the vampire like a lion trainer with a footstool, said, “What are you waiting for?”

  Eph ran to the old man. He got down on his hands and knees and saw the distress in Setrakian’s face, the distant stare. His fingers plucked at his vest, over his heart.

  Eph set down his sword. He ripped open the vest and his shirt, baring Setrakian’s sagging chest. He reached up under his jaw for a pulse, but couldn’t find one.

  Fet yelled back, “Hey, Doc!” He kept pressing forward, pinning the Master up against the edge of the sunlight.

  Eph massaged the old man’s chest over his heart. He didn’t start CPR right away because he was worried about the man’s bones, about crushing his rib cage. Then he noticed that Setrakian’s old fingers were no longer poking at his heart, but were reaching for his vest.

  Fet turned back in a panic to see what the hell was holding them up. He saw Setrakian laid out on the floor and Eph kneeling over him.

  Fet looked for a moment too long. The Master clawed at Fet’s shoulder and pulled him in.

  Eph squeezed the pockets of Setrakian’s tweed vest and felt something. He pulled out the little silver pillbox and quickly unscrewed the top. A dozen tiny white tablets tumbled to the floor.

  Fet was a big man himself, but he was a child in the Master�
�s grip. He still had the lamp in his hand, even though his arms were pinned. He turned it on the Master, burning his side—and the blinded beast roared in pain but did not relinquish his grip. The Master’s other hand gripped the top of Fet’s head and wrenched back his neck despite Fet’s resistance. Then Fet found himself staring up into this unspeakable face.

  Eph pinched up one of the nitroglycerin tablets and cupped the old man’s head in his hand. He worked open his clenched jaw and slipped the pill in underneath the old man’s cool tongue. He pulled out his fingers and shook Setrakian, yelling at him. And the old man’s eyes opened.

  The Master opened his mouth over Fet and extended his stinger, lashing about in the air above Fet’s wide eyes and exposed throat. Fet fought mightily, but the compression of the back of his neck cut off the blood flow to his brain, so the room blackened and his muscles went limp.

  Eph yelled, “No!” and ran at the Master with his sword, slashing the blade across the abomination’s broad back. Fet fell to the floor in a heap. The Master’s head whipped around, his stinger searching, his clouded eyes finding Eph.

  “My sword sings of silver!” cried Eph, slicing at the Master’s upper chest. The blade did indeed sing, though the Dark One flew backward and avoided it. Eph swung again—and missed again—the Master thrashing backward, out of control. He was in the sunlight now, framed before the twin glass doors, the full and broad daylight of a rooftop patio behind him.

  Eph had him. The Master knew he had him. Eph brought his sword up with two hands, ready to stab it up through the Master’s bulging neck. The king vampire stared down at Eph with something like outright disgust, summoned even more height, and raised the hood of his dark cloak over his head.

  “Die!” said Eph, running at him.

  The Master turned and crashed through the plate-glass doors and out onto the open patio. Glass exploded as the cloaked vampire fell rolling onto the hot clay tiles, in full view of the killing sun.

  He came to a rest momentarily, hunched over on one knee.

  Eph’s momentum carried him through the shattered door, where he stopped, staring at the cloaked vampire, awaiting the end.

  The Master trembled, steam rising from within its dark cloak. Then the king vampire stood to its full height, quivering as though in the grip of a violent seizure, his great claws curled into beastlike fists.

  With a roar he threw off his cloak. The ancient garment fell away, smoking, to the tile. The Master’s nude body writhed, his pearlescent flesh darkening, cooking, changing from fair, lily white to a dead black leather.

  The slashing wound Eph had made across his back fused into a deep black scar, as though cauterized by the rays of the sun. He turned, still shaking, and faced Eph, and Fet standing in the doorway behind him, and Setrakian risen to one knee. He was ghoulishly lean, with a smooth and sexless crotch. His broiled black flesh writhed with pain-crazed blood worms.

  With a most horrible smile—a sneer of intense pain and even triumph—the Master turned his face toward the sun and let loose an openmouthed howl of defiance. A true demonic curse. Then, with dizzying speed, he bolted to the edge of the patio, slid over the low wall at the edge of the roof, and raced down the side of the building to the third-story scaffolding…disappearing into the morning shadows of New York City.

  THE CLAN

  Nazareth, Pennsylvania

  I n a long-abandoned and never-mapped asbestos mine, a nether-world a few hundred feet below the surface of the Pennsylvania woods, three Ancients of the New World conferred in a pitch-black chamber.

  Their bodies, over time, had become worn smooth as river stones, their movements slowing nearly to imperceptibility. They had no use for exterior physicality. Their body systems had evolved to maximum efficiency, and their vampire mandibles functioned without flaw. Their night vision was extraordinary.

  In the cages built into the deep western tunnels of their dominion, the Ancients had already begun storing food for the long winter. The occasional scream of a human captive ripped through the mine, reverberating like an animal call.

  It is the seventh one.

  Despite their human appearance, they had no use for animal speech. Their movements, down to the glances of their sated red eyes, were dreadfully slow.

  What is this incursion?

  It is a violation.

  He thinks us old and weak.

  Someone else is a party to this transgression. Someone had to assist him in his ocean crossing.

  One of the others?

  One of the New World Ancients reached out with his mind, across the sea to the Old World.

  I do not feel that.

  Then the seventh one has aligned with a human.

  With a human, against all other humans.

  And against us.

  Is it not evident now that he alone was responsible for the Bulgarian massacre?

  Yes. He has proven his willingness to kill his own kind if crossed.

  He was indeed spoiled by the world war.

  He supped too long in the trenches. Feasted in the camps.

  And now he has broken the truce. He has set foot on our soil. He wants the entire world for himself.

  What he wants is another war.

  The tallest one’s talon twitched—an extraordinary physical action for a being so steeped in deliberation, in elemental stillness. Their bodies were simple shells and could be replaced. Perhaps they had become complacent. Too comfortable.

  Then we will oblige him. We must remain invisible no more.

  The headhunter entered the chamber of the Ancients and waited to be acknowledged.

  You have found him.

  Yes. He tried to return home, as do all creatures.

  He will suffice?

  He will be our sun hunter. He has no other choice.

  In a locked cage in the western tunnel, on a floor of cold dirt, Gus Elizalde lay unconscious, dreaming of his mother—unaware of the peril awaiting him.

  EPILOGUE

  Kelton Street, Woodside, Queens

  T hey regrouped at Kelly’s house, Nora bringing Zack home after Eph and Fet had cleaned up the mess that was Matt, burning his remains under leaves and brush in the backyard.

  Setrakian lay on the fold-out sleeper in the sunroom. He had refused to go to a hospital, and Eph agreed that was out of the question anyway. His arm was badly bruised but not broken. His pulse rate was low, but steady and improving. Eph wanted Setrakian to sleep, but not with painkillers. So before going in to check on him after nightfall, Eph opened Kelly’s kitchen liquor cabinet. He picked up a bottle of scotch, once his crutch, and set it aside, pouring the old man a more gentle brandy.

  Setrakian said it wasn’t the pain that bothered him. “Failure keeps one awake.”

  The mention of failure reminded Eph that he had not found Kelly. Part of him wanted to believe that this was still a reason to hope.

  “You did not fail,” said Eph. “The sun failed.”

  Setrakian said, “He is more powerful than I knew. I suspected it, maybe…dreaded, certainly…but never knew. He is not of this earth.”

  Eph agreed. “He is a vampire.”

  “No—not of this earth.”

  Eph was worried about the old man having taken a blow to the head. “We hurt him, bottom line. We marked him. And now he’s on the run.”

  The old man would not be consoled. “He is still out there. It goes on.” He accepted the glass from Eph, drank it, and sat back. “These vampires now…they are in their infancy. We are about to witness a new stage in their evolution. It takes about seven nights to become fully turned. For their new parasitic organ system to complete its formation. Once that occurs, once their bodies are no longer comprised of vital organs—heart, lungs—but only a series of chambers in the body, they will be less vulnerable to conventional weaponry. And they will continue to mature beyond that time—learning, becoming smarter, more used to their environment. They will band together and coordinate their attacks, and individually becom
e much more nimble and deadly. Making it much harder to find and defeat them. Until eventually it will become impossible to stop them.” The old man finished his brandy and then looked at Eph. “I believe what we saw up there on that rooftop this morning was the end of our kind.”

  Eph felt the weight of the future pressing down on them all. “How much is there that you haven’t told me?”

  Setrakian’s eyes were rheumy as he stared off into the middle distance. “Too much to speak of now.”

  A short while later, he was asleep. Eph looked at his gnarled fingers twisting the hem of the bedsheet on his chest. The old man’s dreams were feverish.

  “Dad!”

  Eph went out to the main room. Zack was sitting in the computer chair, and Eph gripped the boy from behind, wrapped him up in another hug, kissing the top of his head, breathing in the scent of his hair. “I love you, Z,” he whispered.

  “Love you too, Dad,” Zack said back, and Eph ruffled his hair and let him go.

  “Where are we with this?”

  “Almost all set.” The boy returned to the computer. “I had to create a dummy e-mail address. You pick a password.”

  Zack was helping Eph upload the video of Ansel Barbour in the dog shed—which Eph had not yet shown Zack—onto as many file-sharing and broadcast video web sites as possible. Eph wanted true vampire footage out there on the Internet for the world to see. It was the only way he could think of to reach people and make them comprehend. He wasn’t worried about fostering chaos and panic: the riots continued, confined to poorer neighborhoods, though their spread was just a matter of time. The alternative of continued coordinated silence in the face of an extinction event was too absurd to consider.

  This plague would be fought at a grassroots level now—or not at all.

  Zack said, “Now I select the file, like this, and move it up as an attachment…”

  Fet’s voice came from the kitchen, where he was watching television, eating deli chicken salad out of a half-pound plastic tub. “Look at this.”